Expo 2027 plan requires a much closer look

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The last time the U.S. held a World's Fair, it went bankrupt. The year was 1984, and New Orleans decked out 84 acres of riverfront with attractions including two 30-foot-tall papier-mâché mermaids at the entrance gates. It failed to impress.

Over six months, the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition attracted less than half the promised ticket buyers and left behind more than $100 million in debt.

Now, 40 years later, Bloomington, Minn., is bidding to bring a World's Fair to the Twin Cities in 2027 ("Twin Cities make World's Fair bid," Oct. 13). Organizers estimate it will cost as much as $1.5 billion. Unfortunately, the recent history of World's Fairs suggests that organizers will struggle to attract enough attendees or corporate support to pay back that financial commitment. The shortfall, in turn, could lead to the kind of world class financial disaster that occurred in New Orleans a generation ago.

World's Fairs date back to 18th-century industrial exhibitions where European nations showed off their innovations and manufacturing prowess. In 1851, London's "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations" heralded the Industrial Revolution and a range of inventions, from early daguerreotypes to advances in steelmaking. The 1964 New York World's Fair was a Space Age affair where attendees rode the "Futurama" through 3-D scenery of an imagined future.

Competition to host the events is so intense that a global organization, the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), was established to regulate them.

Yet in recent decades, the desire to host the events has not been balanced by the desire of ticket-buyers to attend them. After all, screens offer far more immediate and low-cost means of glimpsing the future.

Can Minnesota change that narrative? The organizers of the Expo 2027 think so. They're proposing to hold a thematic, three-month Specialized Expo that focuses on health care. The 62-acre site will be located across from the Mall of America. If past Expos are any guide, it will host a combination of national, corporate and NGO pavilions and exhibits focused on how those entities succeed in the designated theme.

There will undoubtedly be interesting architecture. However, attendees should not expect much State Fair-style food (it's a health care show, after all), rides or entertainment. Nonetheless, the organizers plan to charge an average ticket price of $53 and project attracting 13.3 million visitors.

That's an optimistic assessment. The last two specialized expos, Expo 2012 in Yeosu, South Korea, and Expo 2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan, attracted 8.2 million and 4.1 million attendees, respectively, over three-month runs.

Expo 2015, a six-month World Expo held in Milan, Italy, attracted 21.5 million, with an average of 119,400 attendees per day. Expo 2027's organizers are promising an average of 143,000 per day.

Anything is possible, but it seems highly unlikely that Bloomington, located in a more sparsely populated region than Milan, can exceed Milan's attendance (and charm).

Of course, these attendance records and projections wouldn't matter if Expo 2027 were intended to be a purely private affair. But this week, as the organizers hosted officials from the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in Bloomington, they were upfront that Expo 2027 would be a "public-private partnership." Precise details weren't provided, but the implication was clear: taxpayers will be among those on the hook if Expo 2027 fails to meet attendance and revenue projections.

That should worry everyone. In 1984, a range of factors sank New Orleans' World's Fair into bankruptcy. But perhaps none was more important than a revenue model that relied upon overly optimistic attendance projections. In the end, Expo '84 attracted fewer than half of the people it promised, and the public was left to pick up the tab.

Minnesota already has a global reputation for innovation. It doesn't need a World's Fair to enhance it, and it certainly doesn't need a bankrupt one to ruin it. So far, the Expo 2027 proposal has been received uncritically, and with little to no oversight, from Minnesota political and civic leaders.

It's not too late to start looking more closely. After all, as Expo 2027's advocates are quick to remind anyone listening, the state's reputation is on the line.

Adam Minter, of Hopkins, is a columnist with Bloomberg Opinion.